‘Those boys never should have been out there’

Tom Hatfield, right, consoles his brother Jack Hatfield, the father of Billy Hatfield, in Clam Point, on Tuesday. Billy Hatfield is one of five fishermen based in Woods Harbour who are missing after their vessel capsized in stormy seas on Sunday. (BRIAN MEDEL / Yarmouth Bureau)

CLAM POINT — Tom Hatfield used slow, measured words.

“Those boys never should have been out there to start off with," the Clam Point fisherman and uncle of missing crewman Billy Jack Hatfield, said Tuesday.

“It’s because of the quotas."

Fishermen have until the end of March to fill their halibut quota, he explained outside a family home. Later Tuesday, the search for the five missing fishermen was called off. If the quota isn’t used up, you lose what fish is left on it, Hatfield said. “Fishermen should be able to go when the weather’s fit to go without being forced to go.

“Every time you go on the ocean, it’s a risk. You’re sticking your neck out no matter what, especially in the wintertime."

The price of halibut is very good right now — about $10 per pound coming off the boat — and that is another incentive for hard-working fishermen like Billy Jack to take the risk, said his uncle.

Jack Hatfield, the father and namesake of the missing crewman, arrived. He stepped from his car and walked across the street to where his grandkids waited for him outside.

“I was coming in to visit them. Billy’s got two boys and a girl.”

Jack agreed with his brother.

“They never had a chance. They just left in a storm, more or less.”

He thought of his son, the oldest of the five crew members.

“We used to go fishing together,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “All I’ve been doing is praying.

“They were in their prime and they were good workers and were doing the same thing I did when I was young.”

Billy Jack baited hooks. He tended the hundreds of fathoms of fishing lines. He helped with the operation of the boat. Like the entire crew, Billy Jack was a worker.

“Only thing, at this time of year, we didn’t fish down that way because too many storms come upon you too fast,” Jack said. “We fished off here on Browns and Georges (Banks). . . . We never went down there until the middle of spring.”

Like the rest of the community, he spent Tuesday praying and listening for the latest reports from search teams.

He thought about the way the search was unfolding. He said he knows that in near hurricaneforce winds, a deployed life-raft would have been just like a balloon on the water.

“That wind’s going to blow them 10, even 15 knots. . . . That life-raft has moved way farther out than what they think it has.”

The wind was definitely a big factor, the fisherman said.

“The last trip they came in . . . they had the wind on the stern.

“But this time, they were just caught right into the wind. . . . They still had it on the broadside.”

They had been fishing for four days or more, and Jack Hatfield said he was not sure what kind of load his son’s crew were carrying.